[lace-chat] Re: What are Grits?

[Joy Beeson]

On 7/31/08 7:59 AM, Sue Duckles wrote:


On films you see people eating grits for breakfast.
what on earth are they?  It took me long enough to figure
out what hershey bars were!!


Corn middlings.   (Cream of Wheat is wheat middlings, as is 
semolina.)  (Well, semolina is closer to meal than grits are.)


Hominy grits are hominy ground to the same
coarseness:  finer than groats, coarser than meal, with all
the fine stuff sifted out.  Hominy grits are about the only 
kind you can find in grocery stores, but I can get 
yellow-corn grits at Bonneyville Mill.


Yellow-corn grits are better than corn meal for making the
crust of a tamale pie, but Spring Creek sells a pilaf
that's a bit coarser than the sort of meal you'd use for
making cornbread, and that is good too.  Unfortunately,
I'm too fat to eat tamale pie.  (Not to mention that right 
now it's too hot to turn on my un-insulated oven.)


Tamale pie is seasoned ground beef baked in a wrapper of 
mush, like a huge tamale.  Bears a family resemblance to the 
hominy-and-cheese dish mentioned later in the thread, but 
Mom taught me to drain the chili and put the broth into the 
mush.  Gives it a good flavor and striking color.  But now 
that paste tomatoes are the only kind that are canned, there 
isn't any broth, so I put a boullion cube and some tomato 
sauce into the mush.  I may throw in herbs that are 
different from the herbs in the filling.


Mom encased the filling in mush entirely, but I couldn't 
make mush stick to the sides of the baking dish, so I just 
spread about half on the bottom of the dish, put in the 
filling, then cover it with the rest of the mush.  Just as 
good -- except that as a child, my favorite part was the 
all-mush corners.


Mom topped one end with cheese because Dad didn't like 
cheese in meat dishes; I either cover the entire dish or 
leave it off.


--
Joy Beeson
http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/
http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/
http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange
http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather)
west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A.

To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line:
unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: [lace-chat] Re: What are Grits?

[jeanette]

Maize meal ( what Americans would call corn) is the staple diet in most of 
Africa.  Some is finely ground and some coarser, some white, some yellow and 
mostly eaten just plain.  It is very popular with a barbecue just cooked in 
water and salt to what we call a very stiff porridge, and then served with a 
sauce made from tomatoes, onions, green peppers and whatever.  The past few 
years a dish appeared similar to what Joy Beeson describes as a Tamale pie 
except that there is no ground beef in but just the savoury filling and then 
baked in the oven.
Africans living abroad really miss the corn meal.  My son lives in Dubai and 
we wanted some corn meal to make to go with a barbecue and then could only 
find grits in the supermarket but it did the job just fine.  We found it 
amusing that a South African woman visiting Dubai, would buy American grits 
to make a traditional  South African dish!  Now there are so many South 
Africans in Dubai that the real thing is available in the supermarkets!
Food, and most other things, are becoming so globalized that it is difficult 
to find traditional restaurants in any country.  Now you can have a pizza 
everywhere in the world and not just in Italy.  Will grits become 
globalized - probably not!!


Jeanette Fischer, Western Cape, South Africa. 


To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line:
unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]